Kianna Brown

Brown 1

Professor Lewis
English 115
11 December 2014

Reflective Preface
My name is Kianna Brown and I am a freshman at California State University
Northridge. My English teachers in high school have always inspired me to do my best and to
push the creative boundary when it comes to writing. Ive applied their advice to the many
different genres that Ive worked with like poetry, narrative, research and more. Ive taken their
advice with all the way to my college level English 115 class.
At the beginning of English 115, I felt like my writing style was good, but I also felt like
I needed more improvement. The first essay our teacher assigned us, was a personal narrative
based off another authors short story and style. The short story that I chose to imitate was Death
Is A Lady by Simon R. Green. This personal narrative is one of the essays that I had chosen to
include into my portfolio. Often when I write, I jump from tense to tense, meaning that in one
sentence I could be using present tense, then the next past or future. Since the style and the story
I was mimicking was all in the past tense, it really helped me to pay more attention to the tenses
that I was writing in. I felt like this first essay really challenged my writing, for I had to mimic
anothers style. It made me look at the different possibilities of writing, story telling, the use of
imagery and paragraph structures.
For the revision of my personal narrative, My Raven-Haired Friend, I tried to fix any
typos that were present and added more descriptive adjectives within each paragraph. I also
added another paragraph to add more to the story and also tried to make it as similar as Simon R
Greens Death Is A Lady as possible.

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At the end of English 115, the last essay that our teacher assigned to us, was a analysis
paper. For the analysis paper, I had to analyze a topic or theory within Blue Moon Rising by
Simon R. Green, our literature novel that we were reading as a class. It was a bit difficult for me
to write up a six to eight page paper without rambling, but I managed to conquer the challenge
that was set before me. This analysis paper is the other essay that I decided to include into my
English 115 portfolio as well. In this essay, I really tackled finding reliable sources to prove my
thesis statement and to back up a counter argument. At the end I was able to get four secondary
sources to include in my paper. This essay challenged me to see a topic from two different point
of views and to challenge the readers thoughts.
For the revision of my analysis, Julia As The Heroine, I went through all of the pages and
fixed all the contractions I could find. I then tried to add more of a back-story to the characters I
introduced within my paper. I fixed any typos that were present and made sure that everything
flowed together nicely.
I mainly chose the two essays to include in my portfolio, because they are both based off
Simon R. Greens work. I wanted both of the essays to flow together elegantly, even though they
are of different themes and genres. I wanted to show my audience what my first essay looked
like at the beginning of the semester and what my last essay looked like at the end of the
semester. I wanted to show my audience just how much I improved and at what degree. I loved
the dark scenic descriptive feel that I put into my personal narrative and how informative and
thought out my analysis paper felt.
At the end of English 115, I noticed a bit of a change within my writing. I had more
confidence in my writing and I felt that my writing had become a bit more descriptive,
informative and formal. I learned to not use as many contractions and to formally introduce what

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I will be talking about in an essay. Even my word choices were beginning to broaden and
expand. I noticed that I really did improve from high school to my freshman year at CSUN.